


Going Further From the Place We Come and Love

by openhearts



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Dirty Talk, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Past Sexual Assault, Roleplay, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 03:51:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3881197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openhearts/pseuds/openhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is fanfiction OF fanfiction, set in the universe of dynamicsymmetry's "Till You Fill it With Me," which is set in the universe of "Pacify."  You'll need to read at *least* TYFiWM up through Chapter 4 to understand how we got here, and I highly highly recommend you read Pacify first, certainly through Part 12 which is when TYFiWM peels off into its own story.  </p><p>Really just go read all of it and then come back.  That's how this was designed to be read.</p><p>W/R/T the whole "fanfic of fanfic" idea: I consciously used some phrases directly from the source material (both Pacify and TYFiWM) in writing this; I looked at this as I do writing any other fanfiction: pulling pieces out of canon and expanding them into my own take on a story that could happen in that universe.  Sunny's voice is part of that and while I feel like this "sounds" like me as well, some phrases and moments are obviously ones I pulled from their writing since this is meant to be an optional companion to those works.  I have no intention of plagiarizing in any way; anything recognizable as Sunny's is theirs and I make no claims to the opposite.</p><p>Beta'd by dearygirl.  All mistakes are mine.  Title from Kiev's Be Gone Dull Cage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Further From the Place We Come and Love

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Till You Fill it With Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3458327) by [dynamicsymmetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry). 



It’s after the first few times with Rick; Rick and Daryl and Beth together, Rick slotting into what she and Daryl had been building not quite like he’d been there all along, but like he’d understood it since before either of them did.  And maybe he did, the way he seems so effortless, so practiced, when he’s pushing them into place, leading them by the hair, holding them down.  It’s been good, it’s been wonderful, discovering this.  Not just a new game but a whole new field to explore, things that Beth and Daryl alone might never have thought of to want now laid out before them like toys ready to be played with.  Sometimes quite literally.

 

It’s after the second time that Rick’s worn the uniform - started out wearing the uniform anyway - and he’d known from the first time that she liked it and she knows he knows and they never talk about it.  Just smile, and he takes his time peeling off the jacket, rolling up his sleeves, loosening the tie.  Takes his time and performs it for her - Daryl may like it but not more than he likes Rick getting naked in any other context so it is for her - and by the time he’s done she’s dripping, clenching and aching and it crawls up between her ribs and burns in a way watching Daryl undress doesn’t.  She doesn’t think about that much at first beyond it being one of those elements that’s just different about Rick for no reason other than he’s himself and Daryl is himself and they have different ways about them even when they’re sharing her, even when she’s so far gone she almost forgets which of them she’s taking into her mouth until she tastes their come hot on her tongue.  That does something to her all on its own, something bright and cracking through her like _slut_ did when it first happened in her brain of its own volition.

 

So the uniform, and that crawling reaching gripping burn, are something she doesn’t give too much thought at first.

 

Then it starts happening that she sees him, out and about during their days when he’s patrolling and she’s out heading from one work detail to another, and from the corner of her eye she’ll suddenly be so aware of him that everything in her stops.  Stops and flashes and that heat isn’t arousal it’s something like hate, something like sickness.  It’s different from “Rick Grimes is an _asshole_ ,” different from playing at _I hate you_ when he’s teasing her into hysterics.  Those are games, delights, and she knows on every level that it’s for her, that he never becomes that absolute asshole without the desire for it welling up in her first until it overflows into him.  She never feels this sickness with him, never feels it with Daryl even when her stomach feels like it’s going to crawl out her throat when she’s wracked with that sweet fizzing fear they give her.  

 

But it’s familiar.

 

It happens a few times like that: Beth sees Rick without planning it, catches his eye and wants to let his warm grin wash down her body under her clothes to touch between her legs, but that’s not what she feels.  She feels the burn, the cold flashing sick, and she wants to believe it’s just something different, something new, something about him and the slightly different colors of everything he does to her, but she knows it’s not.  

 

Then she realizes.

 

One overcast afternoon he’s walking in the opposite direction across the street from her, and she pivots on her feet from where she’d frozen and stares after him, his long strides and the angles of his shoulders in that jacket, and it hits her.  Strikes her really, nearly strikes her down where she stands in the street.

 

It’s the uniform.  It’s the black, not quite as crisp, and there’s less metal, no gleaming badge like-

 

It’s the uniform.

 

She’d talked about the hospital only sparingly once she was back with her family, and while she’d been prodded a bit here and there about it after her initial recovery when she was more herself again, no one pushed her too much.  No one dragged it out of her and so she never said exactly what Gorman did to her before he died.  Before she killed him.  They knew about Trevitt.  They knew she’d willfully killed two more while she was there, knew she’d done it to survive.  To protect herself.

 

What Gorman did to her was part of the whole history of it, part of the pack of memories that ended with the gunshot and for the most part became something removed, cordoned off in her consciousness to Before once she woke up in After.  So none of them knew.  She hadn’t felt a need to tell them everything, any of them, even Daryl.  She knew in a way, deep under her consciousness, that what she and Daryl started doing in that toolshed had a little to do with Gorman at times.  Little threads of it being taken and tugged, woven through the world she and Daryl built for themselves.

 

Now those threads feel ripped out, frayed and sparking like live wires, and it has nothing to do with Daryl, with his violence and control and the unending love he doles them out with.  It’s Rick, and it’s not him.  It’s the uniform.  

 

She wants to love it, wants to play cops and robbers with him and let him handcuff her if they ever find some and feel his boot against her back as she struggles and he punishes her for it, throws her in some make believe cell and locks her in.  She wants nothing about him denied to her, and the uniform is part of all of that, taken away before she ever knew she wanted it.  The sick turns over into something colder, stiller.  Sadder.  Rage and fear and helplessness, and it’s been a long time since Beth has felt helpless when she didn’t choose to.

 

Eventually she makes herself move from that spot on the street.  Eventually she goes about her day more or less normally and that night at home she and Daryl sleep side by side, Rick stays in his room down the hall, and Carl and Judith are safe in their beds.  It’s quiet, and homey, and calm, and Beth resists.

 

She wakes up in the morning feeling groggy, a little sick and jumpy.  She hasn’t felt like this since right after she was on her feet again after the hospital, since before Alexandria and before she and Daryl started becoming what they are now and she decides then and there she won’t stay this way.  She rolls over in the bed she shares with Daryl and tells him she needs some time alone with Rick.  His mouth curls around a little grin.  She doesn’t return it but she lifts her fingers to his mouth and touches softly and he holds them there, and nods.  It’s not the first time she’s been with just Rick, and of course Daryl has known about it, and seems somehow even more pleased about it than she sometimes thinks she or Rick even are.  

 

It’s forming in her mind already, has been since yesterday on the street, she realizes, and it quickens her heart to a rabbit-fast painful flutter.  What she’s going to ask.  What she thinks it will take.  

 

Somehow she gets through the day until she sees Rick mid-afternoon.

 

“I need,” she starts, after calling to Rick and jogging over and exchanging hellos.  She stops, the words caught in her throat, and of course she’s not telling him everything _now_ in the middle of the street on a sunny afternoon, not asking for anything at all.  Yet.  Suddenly it hurts, suddenly she’s nearly frightened, suddenly a flash of deeper fuller sickness dropping through her stomach.  “I need to talk to you about somethin’.  Later.  Alone.”  She swallows, and it burns all the way down.

 

He tilts his head in that way he has, and his eyes are warm and the smile on his face is soft and the little furrow in his brow tells that he sees the nervousness in her, the unease.  He touches her arm and agrees easily, tells her to come up after he’s got Judith down for the night and she nods and forces a brief smile.  He pauses and holds her there for a moment, gentle warm hand on her arm like his gentle warm eyes, and his voice is the same.

 

“Alright?”

 

“I think I will be,” she meets his eyes, squinting in the sun but surer than she’s felt since the previous day.  She lets her fingers close around his sleeve for a moment, curling in her nails slightly before she lets go and backs away a few steps.  She turns and goes on her way, and she feels his eyes on her back as she does.

 

_

  
  


Rick sits on the bed with his elbows on his knees and his hands folded loosely.  He’s in her space, slightly, where she sits on a chair in front of him, her own hands twisted tightly together between her knees.  She tells him all of it, everything about Gorman: what he said, what he did, the lollypop and his spit in her mouth, his hands on her, his weight pressing her back against the desk and his breath on her neck as she reached for that heavy glass jar.  Leaving him for Joan.  

 

Rick listens quietly, solemn and focused entirely on her, but she doesn’t miss how his eyes flare and his mouth twitches, a movement that would bare his teeth if he didn’t reign it in, and she knows what it means.  Knows the hatred and the fury because under the fear she’d felt in those moments she felt them too.  Felt that fury guiding her hands and coursing through her muscles, and that lion’s roar that wants to break from his throat is hers too, something primal and protective that she found in herself and harnessed alone in those hallways and rooms when she had no one else.

 

Once she’s finished telling Rick what happened he holds a hand out silently, takes her hand in his and bows his head low to press his mouth against it and then press it between his rough palms, caging and hiding it between his.

 

She lets out a breath and watches the top of his head, a wash of shivers breaking through her with the release of tension.  Rick feels it and holds her hand tighter, stays bowed over her and she reaches up and threads her fingers through his hair gently and uses them to lift his head.  She stutters a little, eyes searching his face.  

 

It’s telling him that makes her realize in a new way, seeing his subtle reactions and recognizing so clearly that even now, even when she’s about to ask him to help her exorcise this bullshit vestige of a demon, that she doesn’t need him to do any of it _for_ her.  It’s Beth who will do the heavy lifting here, Beth who will find her way through this darkness and it won’t be Rick leading her, it will be them walking together, hand in hand, and she can ask this.  

 

She can.

 

Like it has been with Daryl at times, it’s hard to get the words out at first.  Not because she’s fearful or embarrassed, but just because she’s not sure what words to use.  Not sure how tell him what she needs from him.  But, haltingly, she does, and they understand each other.  

 

He releases her hand and they hold each other’s hands instead, fingers weaving together.

 

_

  
  


It’s a day later, mid-evening.  Daryl is out with Aaron, expected back in the morning.  Judith and Carl are with Maggie and Glenn, which isn’t unusual; they don’t call it playing parents but Beth knows that especially with Judith that’s what they’re doing when they have the kids come over for a night even if they say it’s so Rick can have a night to himself every once in a while.

 

But tonight isn’t for Rick.

 

The house feels huge and empty and too quiet.  Beth stands at the window in Rick’s bedroom, fingers twitching against the loose cotton pajama pants she’s wearing.  Her shirt is loose too, a t-shirt that had been given to Daryl along with some other clothes after they got there and he never wears it but it stayed in the drawer with his other clothes for long enough that it smells like him.  Beth’s worn it to sleep in before and she knew the moment she started building this scene, this moment, in her head that she would wear it.  Not just because it’s the closest thing she has to the baggy scrubs she’d worn at the hospital, but because it smells like Daryl and she needs that to be a part of this, needs that tether to bring her back after she takes herself to that place where she hasn’t been since it happened.  

 

She’d told Daryl an abbreviated version as they laid in bed the previous night after she’d talked to Rick.  Just that there were some things that happened to her at the hospital that she needed to work through, and it needed to be with Rick.  Daryl didn’t push, didn’t ask for anything more, just wrapped her in his arms and let them both slip into a quiet sleep.

 

Now he’s with her even though he’s not, and it feels right even as she takes herself back, staring out the window without really seeing.  Takes herself back to the hospital, antiseptic covering the faint smell of the dead below, the squeak of shoes on those polished floors.

 

She hears Rick’s boots on the stairs and she reaches up and grips at the windowsill, her breath quickening.  She squeezes her eyes shut, wills herself to walk forward into this, into this place they’ll create together.  Rick reaches the doorway and she opens her eyes and lets go of the windowsill.

 

“You’re lookin’ better and better.”

 

Rick’s voice is different.  Still his, nothing put on about it, but there’s something different in it.

 

“Remember me?” he asks, stepping further into the room.

 

The phrase isn’t the same as hers and Daryl’s, isn’t a murmured _remember?_ with fingers touching lips, isn’t “moonshine” tinged with a smile, but she feels that balm even though that’s not the meaning behind the words in this moment, and she takes another pause to practice it in her head, how she can stop this.  

 

Rick had agreed nearly without reservation when she’d asked him to do this, seemed to understand what she needed better than she felt she’d explained it.  And he’d told her, holding her hands firmly, that he’d do it and hold up the illusion through anything until she said his name.  It hadn’t quite occurred to her how far it could really go until he put it that way, until she realized that he had no idea what she would do once they started.  Realized _she_ had no idea what she might do.  She knows he can handle her if he has to.  Knows it because he’s done it when she wanted him to, and it was never the knock-down drag-out wrestling and hitting like with Daryl, but she knows him.  Knows his strength and his speed and knows she won’t get more than a blow in before he’ll have her pinned and safe.

 

She turns around and faces him, halfway across the room now and coming closer, and the slight grin on his mouth is mean in a way she’s never seen before.  

 

“I was fighting a walker,” she murmurs.

 

His eyes sweep over her slowly before reaching hers again and that smile curls tighter.

 

“He was eyein’ your thighs when we showed up.  But I got there first.”

 

Beth sucks in a breath and blinks.  She gave these words to Rick, told them to him from a memory more complete than she’d realized it would be before she really went back to those days and tried to re-live them.  Still, hearing them again in his voice twisted around with Gorman’s throws her back suddenly and violently and her knees buckle slightly with the force of it.  It’s Gorman’s eyes on her and Rick’s hands, the sense memory of both warring as they stroke the skin of her legs until it prickles under the thin material of her pants.  She grabs the windowsill again and Rick watches her placidly from where he stands.  She’s just regaining her balance when he speaks again.

 

“When someone does you a favor, you should show some appreciation.”

 

He says it mildly, nearly casually, but the intent is there, the underlying threat just barely under the surface, and this feels even more familiar; Rick’s sweet gentle threats when he’s with her and Daryl that slither so deliciously inside her.  Now that same sensation works its way between her legs, tingling around her clit and somehow that’s not what she expected, not this messy mixture of Rick and Gorman, present and memory.  She’d been afraid of the illusion being too complete, that she wouldn’t even be able to see Rick through it but she can see them both and their massive differences, the diametrically opposed meanings they hold for her, and she feels a slow wave of dizziness swirl past her eyes.

 

Rick tilts his head and comes closer and closer, and he lifts his hand to his mouth and sucks his pinky finger in, swirls his tongue around the tip and when he reaches her he pulls it out, glistening with his spit.

 

“Have a taste,” he says, his voice going hoarse and low.  He’s towering over her, dark and tall and artificial sour sugar taste worms between her lips.

 

“I don’t want it,” she whispers.

 

“Come on now,” coaxing and vile and encouraging and then he touches her, his finger slides over her mouth and her lips curl at the feeling, her stomach turns over and she grimaces, tries to turn her face away, but Rick is persistent, crooning “that’s right,” to her as he works his finger between her lips and over her tongue.

 

Tears well up in her eyes and sting and she tries to hold them back, tries to swallow down the bile rising in her throat as she tastes his spit.

 

“Should have been mine,” he whispers.

 

She wrenches herself away and steps past him, swiping harshly at her mouth as she stumbles blindly toward the bed.  She grips the footboard briefly, doubled over at the waist and heaving out breaths through her mouth, eyes squeezed shut again as her gut churns.  She breathes in and smells Daryl on her shirt, smells her own sweat and the soap-and-sunshine smell of the clean bedding.

 

She can feel him waiting at her back, not close enough to touch but close enough that she’s aware of him, close enough that he could catch her if she needed him to.  She forces her eyes open and stares at the bedspread, soft gray woven with a raised scrolling floral design.  The vines seem to twist as she watches and waits for the spots at the edges of her vision to abate.

 

Is she ready for more?  The rest?  Is this helping, is any of it going to _do_ anything, to undo Gorman’s hands on her and his voice in her head?  These are things she’d put away after they happened, after she was away from them and discovering a new body that lived through things it shouldn’t have been able to and now craves things she would have been horrified by at any other time in her life.  But this body still bears the scars from that place, and not just the ones on her cheek and her forehead and hiding in her hairline.  Her wrist is still marked too and always will be and these scars she’s learned to look at as talismans, marks of survival, marks that prove that lioness inside her could claw its way out when she needed it.  

 

Gorman didn’t leave scars on her but she can feel his touch like a cattle brand and she’s ready to tear it out of her skin.  Rip him out of her and sew herself back together, and those scars she will bear with pride, with peace and love like the fingerprint bruises Daryl gives her, like the gouges from Rick’s teeth and the rope burns from them both.

 

But right now, now there is more.  This is the the end of the beginning or the beginning of the middle, and there is more.

 

She’s not sure how long it’s been when she pushes herself upright again, leaving her hands braced around the bed frame and giving herself a moment to come back.  Slowly, little by little, with Rick’s quiet breaths there at the edge of her consciousness and her own breathing steadier and deeper.  She turns around and faces Rick.  For a split second his eyes and his face are his own entirely, no mask over them, and she meets those eyes and lets him see her, lets him see the rage and the fear and the pain pressing out of her from the inside and making her larger, turning her muscles to wire and her bones to steel.  She’s ready for him and he sees it and the mask flickers up in an instant, that cool slimy smile climbs up his mouth and his eyes go hooded.

 

“Hope I’m not interrupting.”

 

“Dawn asked me for her key.”

 

He comes forward a step.

 

“Did she?”

 

Beth nods, Rick takes another step, and her fingers twitch but she holds her ground.  Rick tilts his head again, eyes sharp, the rest of him languid and loose.

 

“I was just with Dawn and I don’t remember her sayin’ anything about that.”

 

Closer, and Beth takes a breath and does back up one small shuffling step.

 

“It’s okay,” Rick smiles softly and shakes his head a little, still advancing inch by inch.  “Maybe she doesn’t have to know.  Maybe there’s another solution.  Win-win for both of us.”

 

He’s on her now, toe to toe and still sliding closer and Beth has nowhere to go, backed up to the footboard and clutching at it white-knuckled when Rick reaches out and takes hold of her hips.  He moves into her, hips meeting hers, almost dancing them back and forth and a scream rips its way up her throat but dies at her mouth, just a breath let out as she bows her head to one side, holding onto the bed frame against Rick’s hands gripping her tighter now.  

 

His fingers slip under her shirt and it burns, that acidic burn that boiled in her stomach before now spreading over her skin with his touch, searing a path up her stomach.

 

“We gonna work somethin’ out here?  You gonna be a team player?”

 

She lets go of the bed frame and forces her head up, makes eye contact through the tears muddling her vision as they crest before falling down her cheeks and her teeth are clenched too painfully hard to speak but she nods as his hand climbs up her ribs and a harsh grating cry breaks from her throat and she watches him lean in before she turns her face away, feels his breath on her neck and his hand on her breast kneading and tweaking.

 

“Good girl, Bethy.”

 

It envelopes her, an entire sea of bile bursts into flames and burns out from her middle until she’s nothing but fire and rage, her body consumed and gone, Rick gone, Gorman gone, everything disappears for several seconds and her head is nothing but a scream until it turns into a roar.

 

“Good thing for me you’re not a fighter,” the voice is faraway, not Rick’s anymore, hardly even Gorman’s, it’s something else, something between her ears, rasping as it dies.

 

Something releases, something flies away and suddenly everything is silence, the fire is gone and she’s filled with air, filled until she _is_ air, soft and clean and nothing.  

 

Unscarred.  Untouchable.

 

For some amount of time she floats, somewhere else, nowhere else, not even existing.  

 

It starts slowly when she begins to come back, poured slow like a stream of molasses back into her body, into her mind, into the day and the room and her life.  

 

She feels the pull of fabric and skin under her nails and she feels herself bowed back over the footboard, Rick’s arm around her waist, his other hand still at her breast, cupping her firmly and stroking her nipple with his thumb over and over.  That touch is all him, it’s how Rick touches her.  

 

Her arms are wrapped around him, nails clawing at his shirt and his neck below his collar where she’s dug her fingers in and her face is pressed to his shoulder, tears and snot soaking into the fabric as she cries through her clenched teeth, clinging to him.  Slowly she focuses on what she can see of the room, the crown moulding around the ceiling and the soft warm lamplight.  

 

She tugs away just enough to look behind her, twisting in Rick’s arms, and there’s no desk, no jar filled with candy, it’s Rick’s bed, big and un-mussed.  She turns back to him and feels herself melting, muscle tension faltering and fading and Rick’s arms catching her and lifting her with him over the footboard, onto the bed, laying her down and hovering over her.

 

When her hearing comes back to her it’s Rick’s voice, entirely Rick, whispering, chanting her name at her ear, over and over - _Beth Beth Beth_ \- and there are weak whimpering cries skittering out of her throat still.  She turns her eyes to his and sees him again, comes all the way back and sees his face and his eyes, his mouth curving around her name and she can’t do much more than nod, blink slowly and manage to twitch her hand draped around his neck so he leans over her and she can pull him in, close her eyes and burrow into his shoulder again until all she can see is black.

 

_

  
  


It doesn’t feel like coming down after she’s been with Daryl, or with both of them.  It’s not that pleasant warm absence; she feels herself, feels her whole body light and hot held gently in Rick’s arms.  Her head hurts but also doesn’t.  She pictures wires in her brain gently re-growing in a new pattern.  The same pieces, the same body, the same memories, but rearranged now.  

 

This didn’t undo anything that was done to her, didn’t erase her memory, didn’t even destroy the box she’d put it all in.  But it fits now, into that box where it was slopping and crawling out the corners before.  It’s smaller and silent and she can put it away fully and leave it there.  And she does, folded neatly, tamed and divested of its power.

 

Rick’s hands are moving very gently over her back, just enough to bring her into the present, to the surface of herself.  She lets her head loll away so she can look at him, lift her hand to his stubbled cheek and just look for a long time.

 

“Rick,” she murmurs.

 

“Yes,” he answers immediately, and his hands move more firmly and he nods.

 

“It’s over,” she says, her voice hoarse and wasted.

 

“Okay,” he exhales, and she feels some of his tension slip away as he melts over her and leans in to tuck his nose and mouth against her neck, her collarbone, and breathe her.  This is something she hadn’t quite pictured either, how much it could take from him, and she can feel that he’s alright, that he’d been able to keep things in order in his own head through the thick of it, but it still clenches at her heart, how far he went with her.

 

It’s heavy, all this still laying on them and pushing them down into the bed and she wants to shake away the last of it like dust and make them both new again.  Clean from their work and her tears.

 

“Rick,” she murmurs again, and she moves now, tests herself out and stretches and leans into him.  It’s achey but it’s wonderful, light heady tingles frothing all over her as soon as his eyes touch hers and she can already see the possibilities in them.

 

“Sure?” he asks softly.  She nods.

 

He reaches up and combs his fingers through her hair and she nuzzles into his hand, bumping his palm with her nose until he believes her and his fingers lock into a fist and he tugs her head back slow and firm, testing and watching as he bows his mouth to her throat.

 

It’s different, again, than it has been with him.  A little more like the first time when he’d been with her and Daryl.  A little not like that because he does know her now, knows her body and what he can do to her.  A little not like that because he’s using that knowledge differently now.  It’s been just the two of them once before but it was quick and hard and a kind of playful that is different from hers and Daryl’s sweet joy-filled games.  Meaner.  Irreverent.

 

This - Rick’s hand fisted in her hair and still tugging, bowing her back more and more so the pain is gradual and building so slow she’s hardly aware of how much it hurts until she’s close to choking - this is _reverent_.

 

And still Rick.

 

“Say it,” he orders suddenly.  His voice is quiet if not gentle, but she can still hear the underlying question, hear that this is him checking in again.  He’ll do this a lot this time, she knows, and she’s grateful for it, feels the need for it more than she usually does and not just because it’s Rick, but because literally minutes ago he was someone else.  They were somewhere else.  His touches were not his and she wonders if he’s checking in for himself as much as he is for her.

 

She tries to swallow to wet her parched throat but the angle he’s got her neck craned at is too much and she does choke a little now.  He releases her hair only to grasp at her throat, thumb on her windpipe, and hold her there almost nose to nose with him, squeezing until her face goes red and then a little longer, once, twice, and then he waits for her answer.  And what else could it be.

 

“Fuck me.”

 

He’s rolled up onto his knees and on top of her in a split second, hand still at her throat, and he squeezes hard again and leans in close to nose over her cheek as her mouth gapes for air and he loosens his grip only to say it, his own voice and her own word, hers,

 

“Slut.”

 

It cracks through her like it always does, shocking her, sending her spinning, making her heart drop into her stomach and her clit _twitch_ without even a touch.

 

“Yes,” she groans, “yes, yes,” eyes closed, back arching, legs falling open like he’s put that word inside her and fucked her with it already.  

 

He’s pulling her pants off one-handed, still holding her throat, holding her down as her hips start getting restless now and she almost reaches down to help but remembers herself and just wriggles and shoves them off the last little bit with her feet.  Still she feels his dark grin against her stomach as he leans down to bite a mark onto her groin.  His grip on her throat is weakened by the angle and her hips are twitching and jumping under his mouth anyway and she’s filled up with giddiness at the thought of what he’ll do to make her stop.

 

He crawls off her suddenly and she whimpers, eyes snapping open to follow him as he stands beside the bed.  He takes off the jacket, starts to go for his tie but she lunges up to her knees on the bed and grabs his hands to stop him.

 

“I want you to keep it on,” she says softly.

 

He doesn’t acknowledge her except to toss her hands off of him, reach down and pull the shirt off of her, over her head when her arms raise obediently to let him.  He holds the shirt for a moment, considers it and then sniffs at it and when he catches her eyes again as the shirt falls out of his hands to the floor they’re soft, overflowing with love and it wells up in her too.  A few seconds of quiet, of pause, and then he’s shoving her to the bed by the back of her neck, forcing her into a curled pile of limbs waiting for him to rearrange her.  She lays there and digs her fingers into the blanket, closes her eyes and breathes for a moment and then there’s the clink of his belt, his zipper, and he’s yanking her to the edge of the bed, wrenching her legs open and entering her all at once, snarling at her shriek and hooking his arms under her so he can grip her shoulders and pull her down hard into his thrusts.

 

This burns, and it’s entirely different, and she writhes into it while the tears flow from the corners of her eyes.  She soon goes limp under him, surrenders herself to the searing pain and feels the tremble in his breath as he looms over her, hands still gripping her shoulders so tight and heavy and dragging her down, down to the edge of the bed, bottoming out and grinding hard on every thrust like he wants to fuck _through_ her.

 

“Say it,” he repeats, and this time his voice is strained.

 

“Fuck me,” she cries.

 

“Slut,” he grunts back, and she feels a gush of wet heat flow out of her, probably getting all over her ass and her thighs and smearing his pants still clinging around his hips.

 

Her hands scrabble at his arms and some bit of her brain that’s not being swallowed alive by how hard he’s ramming into her is thinking that she can get away with that.  The fabric under her hands is smooth and she closes her fingers into fists, wanting to wrinkle it, to mark it and make it even more hers than it is already, something of his that is for her just like the rest of him, for her to love her and fuck her and do both as much and as hard as she needs.

 

He’s gone again in a flash and she whimpers, curling in on herself in a ball around that stretched burn in her cunt but he doesn’t allow it, doesn’t give her rest, just flips her over and yanks her ass up and hits her, hard enough to leave her breathless and then he keeps his hand there and digs his fingers in until she trembles.  He puts both hands on her, spread and clenching at her ass before he drags them down to slide through the wetness on her thighs, gather some up on his fingers and then take his hands off her again, leaving her hanging and panting until he touches just the tip of one finger to the knob of her spine at the base of her neck, down, down, painting a stripe of her down her back, straight over her ass, dragging through her swollen lips and stopping just barely before he reaches her clit.

 

She whines, nearly frantic, and shoves her hips back but he hits her again, a hard slap at the back of her thigh that shakes through her.

 

“Say it,” he repeats, and his hoarse voice belies how he’s dragging his fingers over her lazily, spreading them through her wetness and letting them skid haphazardly along her skin.

 

She has to catch her breath, has to try once and fail before she can get it to come out right.

 

“Fuck me.”

 

He slides into her all at once again and his cock feels like steel and even though she’s literally dripping wet, soaked, that burn is there, the good burn of a stretch and the flashing twinge when he bottoms out roughly.  He spreads his hands over her hips, curls his fingers in and grips tight, tight enough for bruises, tight enough to leave half-moon nail bites, and he slides her just barely forward before pulling her back hard, snarling again at her sob and letting go with one hand only to spank her again and give her the response, his voice hard and loud in the the din of her head.

 

“Fuckin’ _slut_.”

 

She’s wrecked, crying into the blanket, her cunt weeping around him, pulsing with no discernible rhythm, the zipper of his pants a cold little jagged line against the swollen red skin of her ass every time he pulls her back onto his cock, keeping himself almost still and yet fucking her _angrily_.

 

She can’t ask, she realizes a second before it’s too late, can’t make any words to ask him to let her come, and so she buries her face in the blanket for one hard scream before she raises her head and starts from the middle, doesn’t give him a chance to order it, takes it for herself and begs with everything she has left,

 

“Fuck me, please, fuck me, fuck me, please, please, fuckmefuckmefuckme-”

 

He’s pulling her up by her hair before she’s done, getting his hand back around her throat and bending her back until she sobs and his fingers curl tight, cock pounding her out of her body and finishing the refrain into her ear:

 

“You little slut, come for me, come on, fuck, don’t stop, don’t stop, you’re _mine_.”

 

They fall, empty.

 

_

  
  


When Beth comes back, body singing with honey-sweet pain, scraped and bruised and swollen, she’s cradled against Rick’s chest, her fingers curled and tucked into the pocket of his pressed gray shirt.

 

_

 


End file.
